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Standing Ovation for Maggiesox

It takes an amazing person to get loud and stand up against something that is not only wrong, but personally upsetting to them.There’s a lot of douchebaggery in the world and most of us just roll our eyes and look the other way. We’re often quick to dismiss people as stupid or uninformed and think that there’s nothing we can do about it. That sort of ambivalence adds to the status quo.

Today, our very own Maggiesox got very loud and very adamant when a Philadelphia sports blog posted a screen grab of a woman’s underwear that she accidentally showed while crossing her legs during a panning shot of the Phillies game Tuesday night.

She rightfully pointed out that this was akin to taking a picture up a woman’s skirt without her knowledge. But Kyle Scott of Crossing Broad (don’t go there, the pic is down and they don’t deserve the page views) took it one step further by posting said picture on the internet.

Scott then defended the posting of the picture with a multitude of lame excuses, including that it was ok because it had been on TV and that it was ok because you couldn’t see the woman’s face.

Maggiesox, and many of her wonderful Twitter followers, spoke up loudly on Twitter today, pointing out this is invasive and creepy and rapey and had Scott taken the picture himself and not as a screencap, could have been punishable by jail time. She went to local radio and television stations and asked them to stop talking about the story and to stop sponsoring and endorsing CB. She also emailed MLB, pointing out that CB was breaking MLB’s copyright laws.

The story even reached to Jezebel, who covered the gist of the background, linked to Maggiesox’s twitter and bought the story to a much larger audience.

And when folks started backlashing at her and trying to justify the whole thing, she stood her ground and took the incredibly brave step of sharing her own story of a man taking an upskirt photo of her and how it has affected her life. That man received three months of jail time.

Both Scott and many of his readers/Twitter followers defended the posting of the picture, including pointing out that other sites, including Deadspin, have similar pictures posted online. As though the fact that other people are doing despicable things somehow justifies Scott doing so.

They also made plentiful personal attacks at Maggiesox, going as far as accusing her of being jealous that it was this unidentified woman and not Maggie’s ladybits being splashed about the internet.

Even if we give Scott the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t think far enough to realize that posting the picture was wrong and invasive, as soon as multiple people pointed out to him what was wrong with it, he should have taken it down. Instead, he continued to defend the act.

Just writing about this tonight has made me ragey and stabby like I was this afternoon, and there’s probably not much more to say.

Instead of focusing on the problem, let’s focus on the woman that worked towards being the solution: A big, mighty YOU GO, GIRL! to Maggiesox for not being afraid to stand up and yell about how wrong this whole thing was.

6 thoughts on “Standing Ovation for Maggiesox”

I guess the question is was it really worth an entire day of networking to get 1 photo of inappropriate content removed? And also, using Jezebel as a partner to expose this, whose parent company is responsible for daily privacy invasions via pictures, posting private emails, etc, seemed at best slightly hypocritical. So was it really about a personal vendetta with one local competing site? Otherwise, if it’s the principle of it, there are thousands of posts on Deadspin and Gawker you should be working hard to get removed as we speak. Maybe the people at Jezebel can help you out with that. Oh wait…

But part of the complication is that, sure, Jezebel wrote about it, but the Jezebel writer’s paycheck comes from Gawker Media which also runs Deadspin (it’s not just some “other site” as you write, it’s 100% part of the same conglomerate, with prominent links back and forth whether you visit Deadspin or Jezebel). Oh, yeah, Deadspin, which again, openly and obviously shares its parent company with Jezebel, posts things such as this: http://deadsp.in/x8Sr8q . Please, “picket” them, too, instead of thinking it’s a positive.

This isn’t addressing the propriety (or, really, lack thereof) of Crossing Broad’s temporary posting of the picture, just that it’s naive (at best – and purposefully ignorant, at worse) to immediately conclude that anyone mentioning “Deadspin does this, too” means it’s being used as justification. It’s being used to point out the obvious hypocrisy of anyone who works under the Gawker umbrella posting an article such as she posted. That’s it. No justification for the picture, no rationalization for it being up for a few hours yesterday, just a typical pot calling the kettle black situation… then a group of people praising the pot because they want to believe it’s nothing like the kettle.

She wanted the picture taken down, it got taken down, good work. Viewing Jezebel’s/Gawker’s involvement as positive (or even even making them aware of it to use as a mouthpiece to get it out to a “larger audience”) is incredibly hollow given the content from which Gawker profits.

Ok, I get where you’d coming from in terms of the Jezebel/Deadspin link and you have a point. I guess in my view, I do not hold an individual Jezebel writer responsible for what the parent company does. It’s not her fault that Gawker owns both sites and I don’t buy that she shouldn’t say something about this incident because the people that write her paycheck also do despicable things.

I’m not entirely articulate on this, but the best way I can think to describe that is to say that you don’t hold Kraft Foods responsible for the fact that Phillip Morris makes cigarettes that kill people. Phillip Morris owns Kraft Foods, but that doesn’t make Kraft responsible for Phillip Morris’ actions. Should this writer also say something about Deadpsin? Probably, but I don’t make her decisions for her.

I don’t speak for the other Ladies… but in terms of the Deadspin post vs. the CB post, to me there is a very thin line of difference. The Deadspin post only shows a lot of thigh. The CB post had lady bits and underwear. I’m aware that’s a bit splitting hairs, but I think in terms of how the post would affect me if I were the one featured and I’d be considerably more upset about the CB one than the Deadspin one. I’m not justifying either – just that I do think there’s a bit of a difference in terms of the level of mortification involved.

I also think there’s a disconnect in saying that if we’re not going to complain about every inappropriate thing ever, than we should never complain about any of them. That’s not really how life works, right? I mean, change is made at a smaller level and you fight the battles you can to try and win them. You effect the change you think you can.

If one person thought twice about why posting that picture was inappropriate or upsetting to women, then what Maggiesox did was worth it.

You all saying that she should sit down and be quiet is exactly why I have so much respect for the fact that she didn’t. It takes a lot of courage to have the strength of your convictions.
People having the wherewithal to stand up against injustices are the people who make a difference in the world.

The Montgomery bus boycotts shouldn’t have happened because those people didn’t also go around boycotting racist practices on busses everywhere?